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If you’ve read my blog, it’s no secret that I’m all for pushing the boundaries of antiquated gender norms. My son wears pink, has long hair and frequently paints his nails. We do our best to encourage play of all kinds, from T-Ball to art/music to imaginative play (like “family” or “princess” – 2 current top favs). I strive to check my own language and behavior, doing my best to show that it’s not about gender, but rather about who you are that matters.

I write articles about this topic. I tweet about it. I speak about it at length with fellow parents, friends, family and the occasional stranger on the street.

I feel that it’s important to have a dialogue about the social construct of gender and what it means in the larger scale of society. However, I also feel that while it’s important to discuss, process and unpack issues surrounding gender, it’s also possible to go too far.

Recently, this article about two Canadian parents who are raising their 3rd child, Storm, “genderless,” popped up in my Facebook and Twitter feed, sending everyone a flutter. The comments on the article range from “Good for you!” to “Oh! The horror! You will screw up your child!”

I tend to fall somewhere in between.

First, this is nothing unique. I briefly wrote about a Swedish couple who kept their child’s gender a secret back in 2009.

Second, while I don’t think there’s anything “wrong” about attempting to raise your child genderless from birth, I feel that it might be a lot of effort for relatively little output. While it takes time and effort to train yourself to speak without pronouns, etc… a newborn baby is unaware of the concept of gender anyway (and will remain blissfully unaware of the concept until 2-3 years old). This begs the question then, who is this all for?

Rather than keep the baby’s sex a secret in hopes that it will help change how we view gender, wouldn’t it be more beneficial to actually disclose the baby’s gender and explain how it’s not such an identifying factor if you don’t want it to be? To shroud it in secrecy seems to place more emphasis and importance on it rather than taking away the power, like the parents hope to achieve. In stripping their child of gender, they’re making it into more of a “thing.”

Going by the descriptions and photos of their two older sons, it seems they have been successful in raising two boys who are comfortable enough with their own gender to wear braided pigtails, whatever clothes they feel comfortable in (even if it means a pink dress), and involve themselves in whatever activity interests them. With seemingly well-adjusted children already, going this step further feels like a social experiment more than anything else.

And of course, the mama in me is amazed that two young boys have been able to keep their infant sibling’s gender a secret as well. But of course, this is coming from the mom who’s son shares pretty much every single detail of every single thing with every.single.person.

It will be interesting to see what comes of all of this. How will Pop (the Swedish child) and Storm turn out and what lessons will we eventually learn from these attempts at squashing gender right from birth? I just hope that while these children grow up presumably genderless, they don’t lose a part of themselves in the process.

4 Comments

interesting post. But I think gender is an issue for babies right from the word go. Yes you can raise them in a non-conforming way, but it is not just parents who impact on a baby’s gender identity. People say ‘ooh isn’t she pretty’ or ‘ooh he’s adventurous’ or ‘girls often have more trouble sleeping’ right from birth. I don’t have a definite opinion on the ‘morals/ethics/politics’ of their decision, but I know that gender starts at or even before birth.

I completely agree. I had a whole paragraph about the differences in how people talk/hold/treat male & female infants and just how much of that does impact them subconsciously (but then the post started getting way more long winded so I cut it). I definitely do not dispute that gender as a construct begins well before birth, especially when people ask “what are you having?” as soon as they find out you’re pregnant. (an aside: my favorite response when asked was, “fingers crossed it’s a baby!”)

Regardless of all of that, I’m still not so sure that attempting to raise the baby genderless will bypass/change all of that. The child will eventually at some point either claim gender or have gender placed on him/her as s/he gets older, and I wonder if s/he will have the capabilities to deal with/understand it in the larger context of society beyond the genderless bubble s/he is being raised in (I hope that made sense…)

I’m struggling if I agree with your comments. This is the closest I’ve come to agreeing with anyone though. I guess when you said, “Second, while I don’t think there’s anything ‘wrong’ about attempting to raise your child genderless from birth, I feel that it might be a lot of effort for relatively little output,” this is like saying that I shouldn’t recycle because not enough other people do, so it won’t make much difference anyway. While this may be partly true, it doesn’t automatically mean they’re going to far. So, I guess I don’t agree there.

I’m also having an issue with people claiming, “I’m not advocating for a gender-less society, I’m simply against anything that limits people based on gender.” While I agree 1000% in theory, to me, that’s like saying, “I’m not really a feminist, but I think woman should have equal rights.”

Does anyone reading this understand my comments? Can you offer something else? I’m searching for the words to express my feelings on it. Do I think the parents are going too far, what long-term effects will this have on the child, am I really advocating for a gender-less society (even though I’m a stay at home mother and LOVE being a woman)? I can’t seem to figure it out. Help.

While I am completely against limitations of gender, I don’t think going gender-less is necessarily the answer. People organize the chaos of the world by creating categories; I think this has more often helped society than harmed it. But with advances in health and science coupled with an increasing interconnected world has exposed us to possibilities of the human body, not the limitations.
To explain with a specific example: While dividing people by sex for competition in sports worked for years, we now know some women produce more testosterone than other women, thus gaining competitive advantage pver other female competitors. Similarly, it’s also not fair for the men, then, that produce less testosterone than other men (but no one seems to dare cry about that one). Does this mean we will have segment of the population who can’t participate in sports or, respectively, never stand a chance at winning? Categories are needed — but maybe not based on external genitalia (for this instance anyway).
Categories can help us process the diversity of human life, but it certainly shouldn’t limit diversity.